Mea Culpa
by chromeknickers
Summary: War changes people: it changes the way they view the world, and it changes the way they view themselves. Can redemption be found through simple acts of contrition, or must the soul suffer to bear its burden throughout eternity? The answers lie within.


_My Spectre around me night and day  
Like a wild beast guards my way;  
My Emancipation far within  
Weeps incessantly for my sin._ --William Blake (1757-1827)

**Mea Culpa**

Drifting aimlessly across the Atlantic, I find myself heading home to the place of tempest and fog. Given a second chance at life, I seize the opportunity, but I fear the consequences that come with such a gamble. In order to begin again, I must look to my past, to my childhood, to define what shaped me, what created me. It will be painful, but my redemption must be paid. I taste these words in my mouth, savour them. They seem so familiar, but drowsiness takes over, and I cannot focus. I languidly slip into the realm of dreams, and the vision that seizes me is warm, and I see the ageless face of my father …

When I was young, my father dreamt that I was running wild and naked through the orchard groves between the hills and the sea. He awoke in our big house with its many rooms and roof of green copper, and he was afraid for me. He was a noble and practical man, yet he believed in prophecy. It troubled him, this vision of his motherless child howling in the moonlight, so he brought his fabled practicality to bear upon it.

In my father's household there was man named Zabini, who was, for all intents and purposes, the gardener (as if you could actually grow anything in the moist clay and rock that hearty apple trees found hard growing in the small English countryside). My father decided that in lieu of my other chores, I should be Zabini's 'little helper'.

Not that Zabini needed or desired the assistance of a bookish nine-year-old, but he accepted my apprenticeship with good grace and allowed that I was a capable enough weeder, if properly supervised. He rarely spoke to me, except to assign me some nominal task. There was absolutely no conversation in the garden.

For weeks, Zabini and I worked mute in the garden until one day, after a long protracted silence, there was this: "I knew your mother."

I waited expectantly. Was this to be the great, untold tale of the woman who bore me, but was never mentioned in my presence? If so, it was not forthcoming.

We continued in uncomfortable silence for months, until one day my careless hoeing resulted in the death of a sapling. He was distraught, but there was no anger, at least none directed towards me. Still, I sought to deflect the blame, the guilt.

"It is just a plant," I said defensively.

"It is a living thing," he said, "and it is in our care."

But I was a clever child, bookish as I said.

"The weeds!" I blurted. "We kill the weeds, don't we?"

His golden eyes went blank. "We kill the weeds, but we are careful not to take pleasure in it. How could we enjoy our lamb or turkey at Easter if we saw the butcher smiling as he slit the throat?" He sighed, shaking his head. "You will find that there are many weeds in the garden of life, my little one, and they will always sprout up next to the plants we wish to nurture."

I am the nurtured plant that became the weed. That day in the garden I had listened to the words, but I had failed to heed them. These words that now shape my life and can perhaps help me redeem my shattered self.

We planted a seedling to replace the one that had died. Weeks passed, and it came time to prune the old growth in the northern grove. It was midday, hot with the sun, and Zabini sent me back to the house to fetch his pruning shears.

In the garden shed behind the kitchen, I overheard Goyle, my father's bodyguard. He was talking to the cook. He was telling her about Zabini: Zabini the Killer, Zabini the Cold-Blooded, Zabini the Avenging Angel.

Goyle told of how Zabini had joined the underground resistance with my father, during the war. He told of how he became the scourge of the Death Eaters and how his name was betrayed to Voldemort. Goyle told of the day that Death Eaters came to the estate of Zabini and what they did to his little sister. I shudder to remember the whispered description of how they nailed his mother to her front door and hung a sign from her cold, lifeless body that read 'Mother of a Blood-Traitor'.

Cook was fascinated. She was far too young to remember the war, but she had heard little bits and pieces of the legend. Goyle told of how Zabini and my father lived up to their epithets: Zabini, the Scourge, and my father, the Dragon. Both inexorable engines of destruction, rending and tearing any and all who dared to wear the Dark Mark.

I remember thinking, _Is this my father and Zabini whom he speaks of? Zabini, who is pained by the death of weeds? _But before an answer could formulate in my mind, Goyle mentioned my mother's name …

I had once begged my father to tell me more about her – who she was to him, did he ever love her, why was she not with us, did I look like her, did I laugh like her? The questions had caught him off-guard. His grey eyes turned dull and listless, and a heavy burden seemed to weigh down on his shoulders. His response was expected: silence.

In the garden shed, I strained my ears to hear what Goyle had to say about my mother and Zabini, but he suddenly stopped talking as though he could sense my presence. I sighed. It was only after my father's death that I was eventually told her name.

I ran back to the northern grove, breathless, confused, enraged, and elated. Could this be the same Blaise Zabini? Was everything he ever told me a lie? Could he—would he tell me about the mother that I never knew?

But Zabini was nowhere to be found. Instead there were two strange tattooed men with wands and a diagram of my father's house. The elder of the two put his wand to my throat and would have killed me outright, but the younger one, not much older than a boy, objected. He said they were patriots and not murderers of children.

The wand-wielder laughed and put the point of the wand under my ear. I was less than a lamb to him a spring culling. Eyes shut tight, I heard the sound of a blade bite meat, gristle, and bone. A warm wetness splashed across my face, and there was a copper taste on my tongue.

My eyes, dry of tears but sticky with blood, opened slowly, expectant of an angel to stand before me. Instead, there was my would-be slayer lying dead on the ground, a bloodied knife lying next to him. He would never harm anyone again. Beyond him was Zabini with a gun in hand, making sure the other assassin joined his fellow comrade.

I heard the snap of the safety on the gun disengage, and I cried out: "He is not a weed!"

Zabini never took his eyes off the frightened boy. "He came to slay your father, little one. Not for a vendetta or for honour, but for false ideas and hollow words!" he spat vehemently.

"He would have spared me," I whispered with tears in my eyes and desperation in my voice. "I ask you for his life."

Zabini grimaced and put up his pistol, and the boy fainted.

The gardener pocketed the gun and pulled out his wand and sighed. I had never seen him with a wand before. When I had been bold enough to ask my father why Zabini never used one, he said that his friend had no use for magic any more, and that is why he became a gardener.

Zabini now turned towards me and knelt down, placing both of his hands on my shoulders, and looked me straight in the eyes.

"This is no mercy," he finally said. "They will take him to the Dementors, and he will suffer horribly before he dies."

A wilful and obstinate child, I would not be moved. And so the boy was hidden, and the other man was disposed of. In time, the boy, whose name was Julius, became like a son to Zabini and a great comfort to him in his old age.

Many years later, when I was leaving for university, Zabini came to me with apples and figs. He sat in silence in the kitchen with his snifter of brandy, failing to look me in the eyes. Suddenly, there came a torrent of words - the litany of his sins, guiding me through his expiation, and finally this:

"You will learn much at this university in America, my little Ginevra, but there is a truth that you once taught me when you were a child, and here is old Zabini to teach it back to you. Redemption is not free. It must be paid back in kind."

"To whom?" I asked.

"To the universe."

**FIN**

**Author notes**: Obviously, this is an AU fic dealing with the tormented progeny of Draco Malfoy and Ginevra Weasley, and her mentor, the often over-looked, Blaise Zabini. Zabini, of course, is very OOC, but I wondered how much war, blood, and violence could change a man. Perhaps guilt could alter a man so.

I chose to have Zabini attack with a knife and gun instead of a wand because he regrets what he has done with a wand in the past, in the resistance. As for Draco and Ginny's daughter, it is up to you to decide why she feels the need to be redeemed. What has she done to cause her to relate to Zabini? How and why did Draco and Ginny get together to have a child? How did Ginny die? _Did_ she die? Did Draco truly love her? Is the war over? Many important questions are raised, but none are answered. That is left to you, the reader.

*_Mea Culpa_ is Latin for 'my guilt'.

_Disclaimer__: I do not own the characters Blaise Zabini, Draco Malfoy, Vincent Goyle, or Ginevra Weasley. J.K. Rowling owns all._


End file.
